Today I've published two by-election guides for upcoming by-elections: for the NT seat of Nightcliff and for the mayoralty of Newcastle. Both incumbents announced their resignations for health reasons yesterday. #ntpol #nswpol

Today's post is my case for crafting a new single-member electoral system which takes a bit from optional preferential voting and a bit from compulsory preferential voting, and why it could work now in Queensland #auspol #qldpol

In which @davidnir.com tells everyone "don't be a 'margin bro'" when it comes to looking at polling toplines (I will be stealing this): www.gelliottmorris.com/p/yes-democr...

In today's post, I make the case that neither major party can rely on a consistent self-interested advantage from OPV or CPV, but rather that self-interest will be different in different seats, and over time. #qldpol

Pollsters should not be referring to 1pt differences between polls as "tiny changes". It is not a change in the same way there's no such thing as a 2pt poll lead. It's hard enough to encourage the media to follow basic reporting practices without those in the industry ignoring them too.

I have published my guide to the upcoming Nepean by-election in Victoria, you can check it out here #springst

Today's podcast previews this weekend's Japanese general election with Donna Weeks, @psephy.bsky.social

With seven weeks to go until the South Australian election, I have updated my candidate lists and unlocked the election guide #sapol

Good to see Fox&Hedgehog are now Australian Polling Council members, joining Pyxis, YouGov, DemosAU and Essential among the usual federal polls that are.

kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2026/01/poll... Poll Roundup: What Do We Do With A Split Coalition ... Or A Rampant One Nation?

The podcast is back for 2026. Yesterday I interviewed @georgehasanakos.bsky.social from DemosAU about the surge in support for One Nation, the split in the Coalition, and how pollsters will deal with these challenges #auspol

I’ve been reading a lot of political history over the break, and the Nationals recent activities reminded me of their predecessors www.tallyroom.com.au/64146

The three most beautiful words in cricket: “five penalty runs”

I'm going to be interviewed on Sky News Australia in a minute if anyone is interested.

With Bardot's passing, the only named individuals in Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire that are still alive are Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and Bernie Goetz. The last one standing will claim The Prize.

Interesting piece by @meganmaurice.bsky.social - ngl, I hadn’t clocked that the system was different in the men’s comp!

i have said this before but if you are actually interested in influencing people beyond a narrow circle of too-online journalists you will be making direct to camera videos on tiktok, instagram and youtube. if you primarily post on text-based social media then you're just dicking around.

There's a queue of people down two flights of stairs to the front door of the building for the Parramatta blood donation centre. They are booking people in for later appointments one by one, so still worth doing.

Elon's little serfs are quite literally begging journalists to come back because every publicly available source of data shows people have fled the platform and young people won't use it. They are literally begging regular people to come back. Don't do it! It is a website by and for actual Nazis!

If you have a blood donor enrolment number, should that tell you your blood type? I don't know mine.

Today's blog post is my last one for the year and it examines the question of whether the 2PP (Labor vs Liberal) is meaningful in seats where it is a Liberal vs Independent contests (mostly the teal seats) #auspol

Finding your tribe: Why Australia’s social media ban gets It wrong: https://benhr.xyz/2025/12/11/finding-your-tribe-why-australias.html

Keep thinking of what social media would have meant to me as a teen growing up in isolation in the country. Sure, I read more books, but also fled home at 17 to live with my boyfriend... ended up married in my teens. Would have loved to be a part of an online group of friends for support.

Today I'm looking at some of the facts used to inform the debate around fixed terms. You might hear that the average parliament lasts for 2 years 8 months - that's true over the last 125 years, but doesn't reflect the last 35 years, when parliaments usually run at about their full term. #auspol

Ben's doing some fascinating work on parliament expansion and this one makes a key point. The 1948 expansion was a big moment for the urbanisation of Australian politics, but that's done. Now it's a way to get more compact country seats without malapportionment.

Today's blog post dives into history and looks at how the Coalition has responded to past Labor moves to expand the size of the parliament, why the attitude of the National Party changed between 1948 and 1983, and what that has to do with redistribution rules. #auspol

Absolutely stunning to see Australia's teen social media ban rushed through while every single government, educational institution and probably a huge number of parents are frantically force-injecting chatbot slop into the mind of every single child in the country without a second's hesitation

I was just thinking — if these sorts of age gates become routine, they will be an EXCEPTIONAL phishing strategy. We'll see websites compromised with official-looking data harvesters added in the same way that cryptominers were for ages.

What the social media ban assumes about our society is that the places where adults congregate to share ideas are never safe for children. And it’s wrong

Today's blog post is one I've been working on for a while - I have drawn a map of what the electoral map could look like if the Parliament expanded to 16 senators per state and 200 seats in the House. #auspol

Chatted with @benraue.com about one of those niche #auspol topics I know too much about - the history of & evolution of Labor factions www.tallyroom.com.au/63678 #auspol

I just published a new working paper with Melbourne Law School's Electoral Regulation Research Network building on the work I've been doing on the appropriateness of Australian legislatures' sizes. Give it a read maybe??

For today's blog post, I looked at the recent DemosAU MRP. We really don't know a lot about how preferences would flow in races where One Nation are in the top two - but if they are polling in the high teens and the Coalition vote collapses, they could win a bunch of seats #auspol

Great stuff from Judy Brett.

The Victorian Electoral Matters Committee has recommended that group voting tickets be abolished as soon as possible, with an independent process after 2026 to come to a proposal on a referendum to change the upper house electoral structure. My take is here: #springst

A note re #Hinchinbrook - it is almost certainly NOT the case that One Nation's decision to recommend preferences to the LNP caused the LNP to win the seat. The follow rate for One Nation how to vote cards is nowhere near high enough for it to be so.

There's a great interactive in the Guardian today looking at Group Voting Tickets in Victoria and possible alternative models to replace the current system, featuring analysis from myself #vicpol www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Today's podcast is with Sarah Cameron about the 2025 Australian Election Study. We discuss generational and gender splits, Peter Dutton's (lack of) popularity, changing attitudes to the USA and voter dealignment. www.tallyroom.com.au/63669 #auspol

I'm following the Hinchinbrook count here: www.tallyroom.com.au/63655 First eight booths strong for LNP (and ON) and weak for KAP.

Today's podcast is with former Liberal ministerial staffer (and my colleague) Michael Evangelidis about how the Liberal factions work. www.tallyroom.com.au/63641 #auspol

Charles Bannerman scored 165 in the first innings of the first test in 1877, 67.35% of the team's total. That record has never been broken. Right now Head is on 99/145, or 68.28%.

We covered a lot in this one. Population movements, country v city, marginal seat campaigns, and the extremely cooked old Senate system.

The podcast is back for a short run, and today's podcast is about the history of previous parliamentary expansions, in 1948 and 1983, with historians Frank Bongiorno and @cmonnox.bsky.social www.tallyroom.com.au/63628 #auspol

Just preaching my message of "wanting to do less more often" we all have our reasons.

Today's blog post is inspired by the discussion this week of the 1975 Dismissal. It looks at how Senate majorities have changed since federation, and the role of electoral systems in shaping them. I also put a case that it's multi-party politics that protects us from a repeat of 1975 #auspol

Mackerras: switzer.com.au/the-experts/...

Why any politician still has an account on X astounds me.

Today's blog post looks at the first time the federal parliament was expanded in 1948 - how the pendulum looked before and after the change, and where the marginal seats were located #auspol www.tallyroom.com.au/63613

my take on this growing "roblox should be in the teen social media ban" discourse is that this is what happens when a government tells the electorate/the world that the way to deal with online harms is to ban something for kids, and let everyone else suffer.

I'll obviously write a more fulsome submission with my colleagues at @abundanthousing.org.au but I'm gonna also write a personal submission responding to (e) with my Most Annoying Opinion Yet: The Electoral Systems Theory of Political NIMBYism: how single member districts make NIMBYs kingmakers